BPS Newsletter Cover Essay #2 (Autumn 1985)
TWO FACES OF THE DHAMMA
by Bhikkhu Bodhi
On first encounter Buddhism confronts us as a paradox.
Intellectually, it appears a freethinker's delight: sober, realistic,
undogmatic, almost scientific in its outlook and method. But if we
come into contact with the living Dhamma from within, we soon
discover that it has another side which seems the antithesis of all
our rationalistic presuppositions. We still don't meet rigid creeds
or random speculation, but we do come upon religious ideals of
renunciation, contemplation and devotion; a body of doctrines dealing
with matters transcending sense perception and thought; and -_
perhaps most disconcerting -_ a program of training in which faith
figures as a cardinal virtue, doubt as a hindrance, barrier and
fetter.
When we try to determine our own relationship with the Dhamma,
eventually we find ourselves challenged to make sense out of its two
seemingly irreconcilable faces: the empiricist face turned to the
world, telling us to investigate and verify things for ourselves, and
the religious face turned to the Beyond, advising us to dispel our
doubts and place trust in the Teacher and his Teaching.
One way we can resolve this dilemma is by accepting only one face of
the Dhamma as authentic and rejecting the other as spurious or
superfluous. Thus, with traditional Buddhist pietism, we can embrace
the religious side of faith and devotion, but shy off from the
hard-headed world-view and the task of critical inquiry; or, with
modern Buddhist apologetics, we can extol the Dhamma's empiricism and
resemblance to science, but stumble embarrassingly over the religious
side. Yet reflection on what a genuine Buddhist spirituality truly
requires, makes it clear that both faces of the Dhamma are equally
authentic and that both must be taken into account. If we fail to do
so, not only do we risk adopting a lopsided view of the teaching, but
our own involvement with the Dhamma is likely to be hampered by
partiality and conflicting attitudes.
The problem remains, however, of bringing together the two faces of
the Dhamma without sidling into self-contradiction. The key, we
suggest, to achieving this reconciliation, and thus to securing the
internal consistency of our own perspective and practice, lies in
considering two fundamental points: first, the guiding //purpose//
of the Dhamma; and second, the //strategy// it employs to achieve
that purpose. The //purpose// is the attainment of deliverance from
suffering. The Dhamma does not aim at providing us with factual
information about the world, and thus, despite a compatibility with
science, its goals and concerns are necessarily different from those
of the latter. Primarily and essentially, the Dhamma is a path to
spiritual emancipation, to liberation from the round of repeated
birth, death and suffering. Offered to us as the irreplaceable means
of deliverance, the Dhamma does not seek mere intellectual assent,
but commands a response that is bound to be fully religious. It
addresses us at the bedrock of our being, and there it awakens the
faith, devotion and commitment appropriate when the final goal of our
existence is at stake.
But for Buddhism faith and devotion are only spurs which impel us to
enter and persevere along the path; by themselves they cannot ensure
deliverance. The primary cause of bondage and suffering, the Buddha
teaches, is ignorance regarding the true nature of existence; hence
in the Buddhist //strategy// of liberation the primary instrument
must be wisdom, the knowledge and vision of things as they really
are. Investigation and critical inquiry, cool and uncommitted,
constitute the first step towards wisdom, enabling us to resolve our
doubts and gain a conceptual grasp of the truths upon which our
deliverance depends. But doubt and questioning cannot continue
indefinitely. Once we have decided that the Dhamma is to be our
vehicle to spiritual freedom, we have to step on board: we must leave
our hesitancy behind and enter the course of training which will lead
us from faith to liberating vision.
For those who approach the Dhamma in quest of intellectual or
emotional gratification, inevitably it will show two faces, and one
will always remain a puzzle. But if we are prepared to approach the
Dhamma on its own terms, as the way to release from suffering, there
will not be two faces at all. Instead we will see what was there from
the start: the single face of Dhamma which, like any other face,
presents two complementary sides.
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